OpenRift

Sounds like someone should pay judge John Koeltl a visit, give him a piece of the people's mind.

Flamethrowers are incredibly underrated and deserve more love.

I sort of get what you mean, although it really varies based on not only the game, but also the level. Like a lot of Doom 1 levels certainly have that technicolor feel you're talking about, but Doom II, not so much. Most 3D games that follow that similarly vibrant look came out from 1992 to 1995, from my knowledge. Think Blake Stone, Heretic, System Shock, Dark Forces, Descent, and Killing Time. I have a theory that these more vibrant color choices were a byproduct of switching from more limited graphic adapters like CGA and EGA, to the 256-color palette of VGA. A lot of sprite artists for shareware DOS games at that point were used to working with the stark, loud colors that those older adapters offered, and it's possible that because of that, they would end up putting more vibrant colors in their game's VGA palette. I think this phenomenon starts to disappear in 1996 with games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Powerslave. At this point I think artists were pretty used to VGA and what it could do, and with that came less vibrant and more realistic palettes. There are some exceptions that crop up in the later half of the 90s but it wasn't as common.

I find that a lot of people that have like Doom Slayer profile pics are kind of in the same wheelhouse as someone who has like a punisher bumper sticker/t-shirt. They're some dweeb trying to create a tough persona or something to compensate for their shit takes. They really aren't worth your time.

Hmm, well I don't have any school work I gotta do for another day or two, so I'll probably just play some stuff. I also have game night tonight at the DOSBox Deathmatch Club, we're playing Terminal Velocity.

I think the "responsible" way of handling them would be to maintain them if vanilla complevels are set, which is what most source ports do (except for ZDoom-derivative ports).

BIG NEWS! DeHackEd and DeuSF support has now been implemented into CGA, expanding playable content tenfold!!

Those options were added primarily because PrBoom-plus (and by extension DSDA) are designed for comprehensive experimentation. Doesn't really serve as much of a purpose in other ports if you ask me. I think if it's causing that much of an issue in a project, it sounds like people need to do their research. I'm not saying there's a problem with having an official definition for "limit-removing", I'm just saying that trying to poke holes in the logic behind how most people in modern-day Doom modding use the term is getting stuck on semantics. I think there pretty much is a formal definition for limit-removing nowadays, it's more that there wasn't always one.

The reason spechits is maintained is for compatibility reasons. It wouldn't work consistently in Doom's vanilla demo format. All limits that have a direct effect on gameplay should be retained. It doesn't really make much sense to have a separate complevel that just fixes vanilla gameplay bugs. Here's the thing. Limit-removing is a term that has varied throughout the years in the Doom community until around the early to mid 2010s. Back in the 2000s could refer to something that was made for Boom or ZDoom. But nowadays it refers to removing the limits that don't affect vanilla demo compatibility. You can argue that it's not truly "limit-removing" if some limits are maintained, but I think it's a better name for compatibility than "some limits removed" or "limit-removing except spechits". It's really just an argument of semantics at that point.

I think when it comes to the term "limit-removing" it mostly refers to removing vanilla limits that have an effect on mapping scope (visplanes, dragsegs, etc.). Anything that would have an effect on gameplay or demo playback (like the all-ghosts effect) would still be retained from vanilla. That's because Crispy Doom is a limit-removing source port, and nothing more. It doesn't have any complevels to set or anything of the sort because it only supports vanilla format WADs, just with extended mapping limits.

In general, limit-removing usually means vanilla format but without worrying about limitations like visplanes, drawsegs, sprite limits, etc.

I thought for the longest time that Doom II had a shareware version that was like the first 9 or 10 levels or something, but only after rewatching LGR's Doom II retrospective it occurred to me that it was only released as a full game.

This is one of those things that on paper I'd LOVE to write for, but I think I probably wouldn't get my piece done in time.

"The original OpenRift"

I agree with the title of this thread, but OP's reasoning just sucks. I'd argue that there is a lot more passion and creativity that was put into Doom 2016 and Eternal than most AAA FPS games made between those two releases. There are things in the new Doom games that I don't like, but they are by no means bad games. I think the problem is that when you have such a legendary game like Doom which has such a far-reaching legacy, anything that would try to live up to that will always pale in comparison. People have such sky-high expectations that if they aren't all met, then they deem it a bad game. I speculate that this grumpy cynicism is due to the sorry state of the current games industry and its increasingly predatory, greedy, and low-effort practices. It can easily cloud one's judgement from recognizing when things actually go right for a game. I want to clarify again that I still think the classic Doom games are still better than the newer Doom games, but it's in the same way that Quake 1 is better than Quake II. It's not as strong as the original, but it's still pretty damn good.